A huge portion of the new content, that BioWare added to Anthem with Update 1.5.0 and the release of the Season of Skulls event, was in Freeplay. There are three new unique events spawning in Bastion. You need to complete them all three in one session to unlock a special instanced Boss Encounter. Defeating the Apex creature at the end will progress your Night Hunter Challenge. This guide will show and tell you all you need to know about the challenge, the events, their objectives and how to quickly and easily complete them all to get your sweet rewards!
As described in the title, the Night Hunter challenge requires you to defeat five different Apex creatures, acting as bosses in a special locked instanced event. Each week during the Season of Skulls there will be a new boss available.
The Night Hunter challenge is available in your Cortex. You will find it under Challenges – Echoes of Reality – Endurance Challenges. To complete it you need to do what this guide describes each week.
The steps in short are:
- First find and complete the three new Freeplay events
- Then enter the new instance and defeat the final boss encounter
- Repeat that each week until you complete the Night Hunter challenge
HOW TO COMPLETE THE THREE NEW FREEPLAY EVENTS
There are three new events in Freeplay that will allow you to unlock the new instanced boss encounter. The locations where they appear do change from time to time, but they are clearly marked with a purple icon.
When you spawn in Freeplay, open the map and click on one of the three purple icons you will see. The names of the events are:
- Freelancer Pilgrimage
- Arcanist Research
- Sentinel Bonfire
To unlock the boss instance you need to complete all three in one play session. As soon as you do one, a counter will pop up in the top right corner, saying 1/3. If you fail an event, you have to wait until it respawns.
The events can be completed by any player in the instance. It is not required that you alone or you and your friend(s) complete all three.
When the two timed events start (more on that below) you will have about 45 minutes to complete all three to unlock the entrance to the special boss encounter. The events are available in any difficulty and scale with the number of players. My testing shows that even the instances boss encounter scales based on the number of players that start it. Any player can join in progress and help out. It seems that if someone drops out, however, the event doesn’t scale down, but continues spawning waves of enemies in the same manner and fashion.
HOW TO COMPLETE THE FREELANCER PILGRIMAGE EVENT
I did mention that the location of the events may change, but this one has always been stationed in the same place. Its entrance is deep under water in the north-eastern corner of the High Road zone.
Once you are inside the Fire Shrine Cave, the fun part begins. You have to pick up a torch and carry it from shrine to shrine.
Shortly after you take it, a green bar will show up in the right top corner of the screen. This shows the “strength” of the fire. To replenish it, run to the next shrine and place the torch for a moment there. Then pick it up again and continue.
There are a lot of crafting materials inside the cave. Spiders will spawn and attack you very often. The person, who carries the torch, cannot run, but can jump and fight. If you run outside the “safe zone” that the torch creates, a new bar will show up at the top middle, showing you how long you have before the darkness starts taking your life (literally).
There are three big shrines you need to find and place the torch on to cleanse them. The cave is dark, but narrow and it’s not hard to find the path. After each big shrine a yellow marker will show you in which direction to take off to reach the next one.
At the third Shrine, you have to defeat a marked creature. Before that you have to find five Shrine Ornaments (located nearby). A green radar at the top middle will help you find them. They are “in the dark”, so don’t stay out for too long or you will die. There are smaller shrines around, which you can use to replenish your red bar.
Once you bring all five Shrine Ornaments, you have to defend the Final Shrine for a bit from Brutes. When Blackblood the Corrupt spawns, defeat it to complete the event.
HOW TO COMPLETE THE ARCANIST RESEARCH
This one may spawn in a different location on the map. It is a timed event and starts on its own. You can join in progress to help another Freelancer or wait for its timer to start it yourself.
To start the event, click on the terminal next to the relic to activate it. Now you have to collect four echoes that have spawned around and bring them to the relic.
Next, defend the device from the freshly spawning Elementals.
The next phase tasks you to step on two pressure plates. This mini puzzle is similar to one of the puzzles in the Sunken Cell Stronghold. There are several symbol pedestals around the relic. The two you need to step on to finish the phase are shown on top of the device (image below)
The pedestals with symbols are all around in a circle around the relic. To speed things up, you can just run through them all. Stepping on a wrong one does not reset or break the event. You can run through them all until you step on the two needed for this phase. The image below shows you how the pressure plates with the symbols look like. If you step on it, the symbol disappears.
If you fail to step on the pressure plates before the timer expires, you will fail the event and have to wait a few minutes for it to reset to try it again.
The event includes these same phases repeating one after another several times. Here is what you need to do in short:
- Start the device.
- Stage 1: Collect 4 echoes – defend the device – step on the pressure plates.
- Stage 2: Collect 5 echoes – defend the device – step on the pressure plates.
- Stage 3: Collect 6 echoes – defend the device – step on the pressure plates.
- Stage 4: Defeat the Titan.
After the final phase, a Titan will spawn. Defeat it to complete the event and get your loot chest!
HOW TO COMPLETE THE SENTINEL BONFIRE EVENT
This one also seems to change its starting location, but the marker on the map will easily solve the issue of finding it. Like the Arcanist Research, this also is a timed event.
Once the timer is up and the event is ready to start, the Sentinels around the pyre will give you the honor of lighting it up. Use a cylinder lying nearby to do that. Next you will see a bar at the top right corner and the objective above it reading “Defend Bonfire.
During the whole event you have to try and stay inside the marked area to keep the progress bar from turning red. Defeat any scar that spawn and don’t let them enter the perimeter.
From time to time a special creature (The Scourge Scar, with a mark above its head) will spawn. Defeat it quickly and then pick up the canister that it drops. Bring it to the bonfire to keep it burning.
There is no filling up the bar of the burning bonfire, but this isn’t your goal anyway. All you need to do is make sure you support the fire and don’t let it burn out. The Scourge Scar will spawn in the right time, you just make sure you have the firepower to take it down quick, otherwise you risk letting the fire burn out.
HOW TO COMPLETE THE BOSS ENCOUNTERS
If you (or another player in your Freeplay session) complete the three events described above, a new one will be made available. Its starting location will be marked on the map. It’s actually one of the glowing golden orbs (Anomalies) that you might remember from the Cataclysm Freeplay events from the Summer event earlier this year.
UP UP AND AWAY (WEEK 1)
The Anomaly takes you to something that I would want to describe as a city in the clouds, but… that would be kind of wrong. The instance is Scar-themed and its layout is very vertically designed.
There are three stages (Tiers) to it and the first one is the hardest, because it requires some team coordination. You can play it on a lower difficulty and/or do it solo to make things go easier and faster.
To complete Tier 1 the best approach is if one player stands inside the marked zone and defend it from the incoming Scar. This will prevent the bar from turning to Red. The three colors represent different progress. Green means the bar is progressing further. This color usually appears for a few seconds after a person brings a canister to the zone. Orange – the bar turns to this color after a few seconds and it starts depleting very slowly. Having enemies inside the zone or no player in it, will turn it into red. Red is the worst as you will be losing your progress faster.
If you do it solo, you have to be extra quick with bringing the Canisters to the generators inside the zone. If you do the encounter as a team, have one person guard the zone and the generators while the other players fly out to bring the Canisters.
You can only carry one at a time. They are usually found in the higher-ground locations and are spread in pairs close to each other. There are Scar enemies and Towers around them, so be careful.
If you get thrown off the platform or fall off of it, it’s game over for you. If you are defeated, however, you can be resurrected and return to continue the encounter.
Tier 2 is easy. It requires you to follow the thick cable that leads you from the bottom platform up up and away (literally). At the beginning of this tier one player grabs a marked fuel cell and must carry it to the top – to the release mechanism on the upper platform. While carrying it, you cannot fly, of course. That’s standard mechanic in Anthem.
To end Tier 2, click on the nearby terminal after you have brought the canister to the targeted location at the end of the cable.
The final Tier 3 is when the boss spawns. In Week 1 of the Up, Up and Away encounter the enemy is a Luminary. The boss spawns near the location of the zone you guarded in Tier 1 of the encounter.
THE UNDYING (WEEK 2)
The second week of Season of Skulls opens up a new instanced boss encounter – Fury: The Undying. This one re-uses an old layout from the Cataclysm Freeplay Anomalies.
Once the instance begins, no more players will be able to join (like it was with the Conjunctions, remember?). The new boss, part of the Night Hunter challenge, is a Fury. It spawns shortly after you start the encounter.
In the middle of the cave, you will see a Relic. During the event, from the edges of the area there will be marked creatures spawning. They drop Echoes that you need to collect for the Relic in the middle.
When the Fury gets shielded, Faye will warn you to expect Brutes spawning. These marked creatures are not hard to defeat. Pick up the Echoes that drop when you defeat them. You need seven to take the Fury’s shield down.
When The Undying gets shielded again, the second wave of marked creatures will be Valkyries. You need four of them this time.
Strange how and why, but the Conjunction seems to only have Tier 1 – the fight with the Fury. BioWare may have forgotten to re-write the tier segments when they decided to re-use the layout of this Conjunction, heh. Defeating the Fury will open up all three chests and finish the encounter. This also grants you the entry “Defeat the Dominion Fury” for the Night Hunter Challenge.
SHAPER DISTURBANCE (WEEK 3)
This event will not surprise you with anything new. All three tiers and objective inside the instance are also found elsewhere in the game.
When you complete the three Freeplay events and unlock the Anomaly, you have less than a minute to enter before it closes. Once closed, nobody else can join you. A 10 minutes timer begins ticking down. You must finish all three tiers before it expires.
Inside there are the expected three tiers. In the first one you are defeating random spawns, including marked Titans. Don’t forget to open the loot chest you unlocked for Tier 1.
The next tier is more fun. You need to bring the seven fragments back to the relic in the middle of the arena. The fragments will cancel your flight abilities, as usual. What’s more interesting is that an orange energy field will be sweeping through the area. You need to carefully plan when to pick up each fragment and carry it to the relic as passing through the orange field will destroy the fragment and cause it to respawn in its original location. Tip: try picking up the fragments right before or right after the field passes over it (some times one or the other is the key, based on the fragment’s location according to the field’s movement pattern)
The final Tier 3 will spawn the boss for you. Defeating it will complete the Anomaly mission and grant you the entry “Defeat the Titan” for the Night Hunter Challenge.
NIGHT HUNTER CHALLENGE REWARDS
Because of the nature of this Challenge – it cannot be completed at the time of this publication, because BioWare is releasing the bosses one per week – I cannot show you the Graphic that you will earn.
The Night Hunter Challenge is part of the major Indomitable Challenge, which requires you to complete all Season of Skulls Challenges to earn the new Javelin Armor Packs Indomitable offers.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I will be updating this guide each week with the new objectives and missions that may and should become available to help you complete your challenge. Be patient. The Night HuntER challenge cannot be completed quickly. BioWare only releases one new creature per week of the mentioned five in the list.
I hope you enjoyed this Season of Skulls Night Hunter Challenge Guide. It will take you less than an hour of your Anthem time each week to complete it, just don’t skip a week, because we don’t know if BioWare plans to release all bosses at the same time. If you miss a week, you may not be able to complete the Challenge in the end (sounds unlikely, but who knows…).
Don’t forget to share this guide with your friends or those, who might need it to complete their own challenges.
What next? Why not check out the ANTHEM Season of Skulls Lost in Darkness Secret Challenge Guide?
